300
Opinion of Souter, J.
if there was a "reasonable likelihood" that the lost testimony "could have affected the judgment of the trier of fact").
The circuitous path by which the Court came to adopt "reasonable probability" of a different result as the rule of Brady materiality suggests several things. First, while "reasonable possibility" or "reasonable likelihood," the Kotteakos standard, and "reasonable probability" express distinct levels of confidence concerning the hypothetical effects of errors on decisionmakers' reasoning, the differences among the standards are slight. Second, the gap between all three of those formulations and "more likely than not" is greater than any differences among them. Third, because of that larger gap, it is misleading in Brady cases to use the term "probability," which is naturally read as the cognate of "probably" and thus confused with "more likely than not," see Morris v. Mathews, 475 U. S. 237, 247 (1986) (apparently treating "reasonable probability" as synonymous with "prob-ably"); id., at 254, n. 3 (Blackmun, J., concurring in judgment) (cautioning against confusing "reasonable probability" with more likely than not). We would be better off speaking of a "significant possibility" of a different result to characterize the Brady materiality standard. Even then, given the soft edges of all these phrases,3 the touchstone of the enquiry
3 Each of these phrases or standards has been used in a number of contexts. This Court has used "reasonable possibility," for example, in defining the level of threat of injury to competition needed to make out a claim under the Robinson-Patman Act, see, e. g., Brooke Group Ltd. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 509 U. S. 209, 222 (1993); the standard for judging whether a grand jury subpoena should be quashed under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 17(c), see United States v. R. Enterprises, Inc., 498 U. S. 292, 301 (1991); and the debtor's burden in establishing that certain collateral is necessary to reorganization and thus exempt from the Bankruptcy Code's automatic stay provision, see United Sav. Assn. of Tex. v. Timbers of Inwood Forest Associates, Ltd., 484 U. S. 365, 375-376 (1988). We have adopted the standard established in Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U. S. 750 (1946), for determining the harmlessness of nonconstitutional errors on direct review as the criterion for the harmlessness enquiry concerning constitutional errors on collateral review. See Brecht v. Abra-
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